“I don’t remember,” he says quietly.
“Of course you don’t,” says Rigo. “All this time, you thought you were the sheriff. But you were just another resident. Another rat in the experiment. Frankly, you should thank me. Now you’re finally free to leave.”
Cooper, untethered, falls to his knees. He stares at the dirt. The sun is so bright. He remembers the tree now. The crash. The frail man in his headlights.
Behind him, the red chapel door swings open.
Every eye in the town turns now toward the chapel, save for Cooper’s. Even Santayana, near giddy from this exhilarating turn of events, rises from her lawn chair to see who’s exiting the chapel.
Fran closes the red door behind her.
“Stop,” she says.
Cooper turns now, too, hearing her voice, knowing it’s her, and when he sees her he knows she’s heard everything, and he knows it doesn’t matter anymore. He is reminded now that what matters, all that matters, is the life of the boy behind the door. Cooper understands this with a clarity so sharp and unfamiliar to him that it’s startling. A clarity that brings him back to his feet. A clarity that spurs him now to say, “Fran—”
“Stop,” she says again.
And Cooper’s not sure if she means for him to stop this confession, or for the agents to stop these proceedings, or whether her aim is to barter the boy or perhaps herself or simply to appeal to some higher human reason. And he never learns which of these is true because at that moment Rigo raises his gun and points it at Fran.
Rigo says, “I think it’s time to end this. I think it’s best you bring that boy out to us right now.”
And there’s a moment when Cooper looks at Rigo and thinks to lunge, to fight, he’s close enough, maybe, to reach Rigo and topple him, to go down fighting—he’ll die, of course, Cooper knows that, he deserves it, he will die, Rigo has the gun and there’s three more guns behind him, all ready to put Cooper down, but that doesn’t matter at all, he knows, because all that matters is Fran and the boy. And the only thing that stays Cooper’s hand in this moment is a lack of assurance that his actions would save them. He must know beyond a doubt that they’ll be saved.
Rigo stays still, his arm steady, the gun pointed.
“Bring the boy. Now,” he says.
And Fran says, “You don’t raise your gun to me. You don’t even raise your voice to me. I fucked your boss, and I shot your boss, and I left him for dead, and you’re nothing but a functionary. You’re a letter from a dead man in the past that I choose to ignore. There is nothing you can do to hurt me. So you can put your gun away right now because you will never get what you came for, not ever. Don’t you see that? You either leave here without my son or you die here. Those are the only outcomes.” She steps forward. “Do you understand that now? You can shoot the sheriff dead, and you can shoot me dead, but this town will prevail. This town will swallow you whole. You want to read us files? You want to reveal our histories to us? The only thing those files should be telling you is that you are a fool to stay even a moment longer. You’re not shaming us, Rigo. You’re reminding us of who we are. And that doesn’t end well for you.”
At her words, the crowd, previously cowed into retreat, seems in some barely perceptible way to stir.
Rigo, his pistol raised, seems in the grip of a genuine confusion. “You want every person here to know what you did?”
“I know what I did,” she says. “I know who I am. Tell anyone you want.”
In the long moment that follows, the silent air seems almost to beg for a gunshot. The crowd is tensed for it. Even Fran seems to know that it’s coming. In a strange way, she doesn’t care, because she knows the boy will live now. Without Cooper, without her, if that’s what it takes, but she knows the town will triumph. She feels it, and understands it now, and for her, for the crowd, for Cooper, even for Rigo, for Santayana, the understanding is clear among all of them, like a newly signed treaty. A gunshot would be meaningless, extraneous. A gunshot would only signal the unloosing of the ferocity that now simmers potently among those gathered in the street.
So the silence persists.
And in the silence, absent the expected gunshot, the red door swings open again.
It’s Robinson, in his rumpled brown uniform.
“Enough of this,” he says, looking exhausted, as he closes the door behind him. He walks into the street, past Fran, toward Cooper and Rigo. “She’s right. Put that gun down,” he says to Rigo, calmly.
“You’ll get your turn,” says Rigo, not even looking at Robinson.
“My turn for what, exactly? My name is Walter Robinson, but my real name is Raymond Roebling. I’m fifty-two years old, I never murdered anyone in my life as best I know. I’ve never even struck a man in anger, though I have a feeling that’s about to change.” He walks calmly toward Rigo. “You’re not going to shoot this woman; you’re not going to take that boy. This is crazy, and you need to give it up.”
Rigo swings the gun impotently toward Cooper. “Make him stop.”
“It’s over,” Cooper says.
Rigo swings his gun back toward Robinson. “Don’t come any closer, I’m warning you—”
Behind Rigo, Santayana watches. The agents behind her, framing Bette Burr, reach to place their hands on their holstered weapons.
Robinson’s close enough now to Rigo, a dozen yards or so, that they could play a game of catch. And Cooper feels a sudden spark of dread and says, “Walt, don’t,” but Robinson waves him off and says to Rigo, “That’s it. It’s over. All of it.”
Rigo swings the gun back toward Cooper, as though pleading with Cooper to intervene, as though they’re allies now, but Cooper does nothing, so Rigo swings the gun back toward Robinson, who’s now just a few feet away. Still calm. Still walking.
“Rigo, please—” says Robinson, and then the shot, long anticipated, finally arrives.
Rigo startles. The crowd recoils.
“Oh no,” says Hannibal weakly, inside the chapel, at the window, watching.
“What?” says Dawes, from the chair in which she’s resting.
Robinson’s body has already fallen in the street, even as the sound of the killing shot dissipates over the crowd like a flock of birds dispersing.
Santayana lowers her discharged pistol.
Robinson having understood what Fran knew, what Cooper knew, what they all understood, that it would take a gunshot to end this.
Or to begin it.